


among some talk of you and me

by Hokuto



Category: The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
Genre: Academia, Conversations, F/F, Gen, Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Temptation, Vampires, Yuletide, Yuletide 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reader, I pray that you will have the strength to walk with me a little longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	among some talk of you and me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twtd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twtd/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! ♥ Hope I didn't go too overboard on the manuscript geekery...

To the reader of these documents - you who have followed my family through its darkest days - this further incident will come as no surprise, following as it does so close upon the last of which I wrote. I have debated long with myself whether I ought to write of it at all; in part from shame, in part from a fear that to write more would only ensnare me deeper. Yet I cannot deny that danger remains near, and however I may fear for myself, I fear more for you, reader, who have already come so far down this dark path with me and may be forced to go farther still. I pray that you will have the strength to walk with me a little longer.

* * *

  
I have previously written of my trip to Philadelphia and of the tome I acquired there; I shall not revisit it, save to tell you that the rest of the conference passed without any other disturbances, and I returned safely to Oxford, where I began to put together the history that you have read. The book - I had not opened it again, but when I unpacked I slipped it into a seldom-used drawer in my office desk, where it could not catch a student's eye or tempt me, and I did my best not to think of it.

This was a less difficult task than you might imagine. I had lectures and tutorials to plan, a half-finished article that needed researching, students with problems to be dealt with, and, of course, my own home to take care of; my partner and I had long ago come to an equitable distribution of chores, but Marian never can quite resist the opportunity to rearrange my bookshelves when I am away, and as with any absence I found numerous small tasks that had been neglected and required tending.

Even so, the book never quite left my mind. I could tell myself all I wanted that its appearance was a mistake - perhaps some earlier, uncurious recipient had bequeathed it to the Philadelphia collection, or a remaining servant of that terrible prince had acted on his late master's wishes - but my heart remained unconvinced. Passing Barley in the halls or seeing him in the Bodleian, as I often did, was of no comfort; we had remained friends over the years, but that friendship was based on a firm understanding that there were matters we could not speak of, and yet his very presence was a reminder of them.

At last, growing frustrated with myself, I decided to go up to York. I intended to discuss the dating of certain decorative elements in English manuscripts as part of my article, and a colleague had pointed me towards a manuscript housed in the York archives as a useful example; a change in scenery - well away from the dragon in the drawer - would do me good, and so I arranged for an appointment with the archivist at York, made my excuses to my students, and took a train up to the city. Marian came with me, claiming that she only wanted to do some shopping while I secluded myself with books, but she held my hand for the duration of the trip. She has never been the demonstrative sort - a matter in which we are well-matched - and the unexpected gesture touched me.

The reading room for the archives at York is a small, modern room within an older building, in the shadow of the Minster itself. I put my bag in a locker, keeping out only a small notebook and a pencil, and filled out the form for a reader's ticket, then went upstairs to greet the archivist and see the manuscript.

The archivist's office was next to the reading tables; I went in to meet him and found him at his desk. He stood up and said hello after I introduced myself, and opened a box to hand me the manuscript I had arranged to see. Instead of the book of hours I expected, however, he gave me a small, thick book with an embedded title on the front cover that read _Eneas_.

Misinterpreting the surprise on my face, he said, "Yes, the medieval binding's still intact - it's very nicely preserved, actually. I know Vergil manuscripts are practically a dime a dozen, but this one hasn't got the Eclogues or Georgics attached, and it's heavily annotated; quite a prize if you're interested in medieval commentaries on the Aeneid."

I had never heard of the York archives obtaining a Vergil manuscript.

There was a slight vagueness in the archivist's eyes - or did I imagine it? - and I decided not to argue with him, taking the book with me out to the main reading room and choosing a set of bookrests to set it on while I read.

The archivist had been perfectly truthful about the annotations; it was difficult to make out the original single column of verse, surrounded as it was by notes in various faded inks and with numerous interlinear glosses. Although paleography is not a specialty of mine, I guessed the script of the main text to be a very late caroline minuscule, with mild flourishes and forking on certain characteristic letters of the transitional scripts, and I thought that the book had likely been written sometime in the twelfth or thirteenth century, before the broken minims and angularity of the later gothic scripts had developed.

I turned my attention to the notes; I had a feeling that the reason for this manuscript's appearance lay in them, and though I dreaded what I might find, I could not suppress my curiosity any longer. Although they were of varying ages and written in several languages - at a glance, I could identify Greek, Latin, a Cyrillic script that I thought might be medieval Romanian, and English - I began to notice the similarities between them; an angularity to the bowls of rounded letters, the peculiar flourish to the bottom of the u, an unusual formation of m and n... As I turned the pages, I could not escape the conclusion that every note, no matter the language, had been written in the same hand.

I slowed my pace and took some time to translate a few of them, skipping the interlinear notes, which seemed to be primarily word-glosses. The Latin notes were frequently cultural or religious, some likely taken from Servius's commentaries: _S. says that scrficing a bull to Zeus ÷ heresy & cause for ltr troubles_ and the like, the abbreviations giving the notes an additional layer of difficulty. The English notes, on which I found myself concentrating - most of them seemed to have been written in less-faded ink and had spellings close to modern conventions - were of a more analytical sort, or at least more personal. I found one in book three, by the verse where Aeneas defends his wearing of Greek armor in order to escape Troy, that read only _opinions on ethics of this change more often than fashions in hats_ ; there were two notes in Greek just above it that appeared to deal with the same topic.

My unease growing with every note - _Radu always cried at this part_ in Romanian near the end of book four, a Greek note on the meaning of the bough in book six, an inexplicable _sinful_ in Latin by the meeting of Pallas and Aeneas - I finally turned to book twelve, with its abrupt and long-debated ending.

There were, surprisingly, only two notes by the last few lines; one in Greek that sounded like a quote from a commentary, though not one that I could identify, and one in English. I bent closer to the page to read the latter, as the writing was quite small, and read with some difficulty the following:

 _Modern schlrship frquently condemns Aeneas for acting out of rage rther than following Stoic ideals.´ yet Aeneas ÷ not ncsarily meant to be an ideal. Treatment of Dido justified by fate but othr actions less clear.´ spcfcally killing T is practical & epic rther than Stoic. I wld have done the same._

"My opinion on the matter is unchanged," said a voice from across the table, and I froze, scarcely able to breathe. I had heard no one enter the reading room, much less sit across from me. "Turnus proved himself untrustworthy, and he had slain Pallas; I find Aeneas's rage quite justified."

I raised my eyes from the book just far enough to see the arm casually resting on the table, an elbow propped next to it, in long dark coat-sleeves trimmed with white fur. I quickly looked back to the manuscript; I had no desire ever to see that gaunt and haunting face again, and certainly not under the bright, revealing lights of the York reading room.

"Of course, there is an argument to be made for the virtue of mercy," Dracula said, "but I have never found it very -"

"How can you be here?" I said, keeping my voice down lest I attract the attention of the archivist or some other poor reader. "I saw you die," and that memory too was vivid in my mind, the monster falling apart into dust on the crypt's floor.

"Dust, mist, there is so little difference between them," he said. "And I have learned to choose my battles, over the years; that one was lost."

I realized my hands were tightening on the manuscript and forced myself to relax them before I could damage it. The book had done nothing wrong. "If that battle was lost," I said, and to refer so casually to a struggle that had cost so much was painful, "why are you here?"

"Why do you think?" said Dracula. "Because the state of my library is dreadful, of course. When I moved it from Sveti Georgi, the little organization it had was lost. I have begun to fear for the safety of the more fragile volumes especially. What a shame it would be if I were to lose the second decade of Livy, or Origen's treatises - my copy of Origen is particularly fine..."

"And so you came back to harass me?" I said, feeling my temper rise, though I still refused to look up. The mention of Livy and Origen had piqued my unwilling interest - Livy's second decade had been lost for centuries, and Origen survived mostly in censored translations by those who wished to defend him against charges of heresy - but no work written on this earth could tempt me to join the monster who had torn my family apart for so long and caused us such grief. "You've gotten impatient - aren't you supposed to wait until I hunt you down myself?"

From the edge of my vision I saw him remove his arm from the table, as if he had leaned back in the chair. "Perhaps the modern world has been a poor influence on me," he said thoughtfully. "I should certainly never stand another fourteen years in Hungary at this rate... This slow hunt has grown wearisome, and it actively harms my library, which irritates me."

I have never been quick to anger, but I thought of Marian browsing the York shops, unaware of the evil that sat across from me and spoke casually of a "hunt" that could leave her dead, and I felt dizzy and breathless with rage.

"If I become any less patient, I may find myself advertising for a librarian in the newspaper," Dracula went on. "Or perhaps on the - internet, although I doubt I should easily find anyone with the skills I seek. I would certainly prefer someone with proven credentials, such as yourself... But I see that you are not tempted. Of course, the Aeneid is so well-studied - perhaps if I started with the Origen next time? My notes on it are not so interesting, but I imagine the text itself would -"

"There's nothing you can offer me that I would accept," I said, my voice rising, out of my control. I did not care that there might be other readers to hear us, or that I had come unarmed, without bullet or stake or even a crucifix; I was too furious to care. "Did you forget? I know exactly what you are - no one in the world knows better than I do. How dare you try to _tempt_ me into working for you? Did you seriously think I would even consider it, after everything you've done?"

"You certainly are spirited," he said, with something that might have been amusement in his voice. "Very like your mother - no, do not start shouting again, I am sincere. And your scholarship is impeccable; you would take excellent care of my library, and you would appreciate it properly, unlike some I have approached."

"It doesn't matter," I said. "No. My answer will always be no." My anger still had the better of me, giving me a dangerous confidence, and I could not stop myself from asking, "If you can understand that you lost before, then why? Why are you still trying to drag me into this?"

A brief silence; then Dracula said, "I have been able to do little enough for my land through the years. And not much more than that for the remains of my family..."

I glanced up. The steady lights of the reading room were not kind to his harsh face, and I looked away again quickly; even so I was struck less by his inhuman pallor, but more by the dullness in those eyes that I had remembered as so unnaturally bright. In that moment alone my heart wavered, imagining the weight of five hundred years without those I loved.

Yet perhaps I imagined that dullness, for then he said quite briskly, "As you remain obstinate, I will not waste my time or yours any further today," and a white hand reached out and took the Aeneid manuscript from the bookrests, one thumb caressing the binding with an absent-minded familiarity. "I shall keep this, then, and you may keep your pride; I hope that one day you will reconsider my offer."

With that he was gone.

I remained at the table for several more minutes, staring down at the empty red cushions, before I got up and left in a rush, without even putting the bookrests away.

Marian and I had agreed to meet up at a certain pub she knew after the archive closed; it was hours yet before that time, but by some lucky chance I saw her walking down a street near the Minster, a shopping bag already dangling from one hand. My heart lifted at seeing her safe, and I hurried towards her. She caught sight of me and waved with her free hand, and as soon as I had drawn close enough to hear her without straining she began talking, quite cheerfully, while I froze. I couldn't understand a word coming out of her mouth; it sounded like nonsense, and for the first time it occurred to me that I did not know what language I had spoken with Dracula in the library.

"- and I saw about a thousand bookstores," she said, the words abruptly resolving into coherence, "we ought to poke around them before we go back, we've got loads of time. I met a rather odd man while I was looking in the shops; I didn't care for the look of him, but he did tell me about this charming-sounding little church that still has its Georgian pews, and you know how I love the Georgians, I would like to - but my dear, you look so pale! Are you feeling all right?"

"Fine," I said softly, "I'm fine," and uncaring of what the crowds around us would think I hugged her tightly, feeling the warmth of her cheek against mine.

"Well, if you say so," said Marian, practical as ever. "But before we do anything else, let's go and get tea - you do look awfully pale. There's a lovely little place that's just past the Minster, shall we try it?"

"That sounds like an excellent idea," I said, and linking my arm with hers I left behind the threat of my past for a little longer.


End file.
